I have tried to build this game with keyboard only controls in mind. Now that I am designing the Trade menu/interface...I find myself at an impass. Do you, the javagaming community, think it is too much to ask a player to type in something like this to initiate a "buy" at a trade station? (b=buy, s=sell)

1,27,15,b

or for mutliple transactions

1,27,15,b,2,33,50,s

This is after providing the player with a list of products available for sale and a list of his cargo.

Keep in mind I woulf prefer not to get into mouse capture at this point, as I have not used it at all so far, and it is a full screen app.

How is the user being presented with these choices? If they're told all the options then have to type the string in all at once, people will likely find it annoying.

If you take users through each number via on-screen prompts, things will appear to be a lot more fluid - especially if you can guarantee that when following a "b" directive, "14" will always refer to "iron ore" (or whatever). I expect most people will find it pretty fast, once they get used to it.

If you're dealing with a small number of options, using appropiate letters instead of numbers is always better ("foodstuffs, components or metal ores?")

Also consider using cursor keys to select an item in a list instead - you may find it more user-friendly to press Down 10 times rather than pressing "t" once. Prototype it and see how it feels.

As I'm sure you're aware, choosing one from a long list of items is much better down with a mouse. But if you want to avoid it, that's fine - there's no real reason why a pure keyboard interface can't work!

Is this going to be anything like the stock exchange trade screen in Frontier : Elite 2?If so, can't you just do it like that? (left arrow buys stuff from stockmarket at current price,right arrow sells to the market at current price.up and down scrolls through the stock in the market.)

diablo games do "ctrl+right-click = buy as many of item X as you can afford/fit in your pack/etc" which works quite well.

I think the best thing is to think about what amounts people will normally be buying - e.g. if they are usually going to want to buy "as much as I can afford".

If you have limited space / money, and players are likely to want to split their purchase mulitple ways, I'd have a thing that let you say what percentage of your space you wanted to fill, rather than how many items you wanted...

maybe a combo of the two....one right arrow press equals one product, shift + right arrow means buy all you can afford or fit! ??

one last question.

Does it make more sense to have all places that can trade product show a lost of all products in the known universe and have 0 for quantity if they dont carry it or only a short list of products they do carry.

Would probably be much easier to code initially if all trade ports have the full list to start.

Does it make more sense to have all places that can trade product show a lost of all products in the known universe and have 0 for quantity if they dont carry it or only a short list of products they do carry.

Would probably be much easier to code initially if all trade ports have the full list to start.

Despite obvious problems, it has a huge UI advantage: positional consistency. With variable length lists from place to place, you never know where on the screen the button you want to press is going to appear. With every list always in the same order with the same items, you innately learn where you need to click - it doesn't matter that most people won't realise they do, nor does it matter that only a few will have the confidence to start moving mouse / whatever to the right place before they've had time to read the screen...it will just "feel" subtly and slightly smoother. Especially if you do some colouring trick to make the 0 quantity items fade whilst still occupying the standard screen hieight + width.

But...make a webstartable version, put it up, and we'll try it and let you know .

I guess I should ask what os you are on and announce, albeit late, that I have only tested this on Win2k with and without video cards of quality....oh and thanks Kev.

I poked around the code and that is a drawString(msg, #, #); so msg, obvioulsy, is null, I have set some capturing for it, but can't post it until tonight for webstart, earlier for the jar to download.

I have been moving forward with my implementation of the mouse. So far, so good. My biggest charlie-horse is whether to do point and click navigation, how and in what method...

i.e.-should you click somewhere in space and then ship thruster ignite, and the ship starts moving to that position handling its own rotation and thrust?-should there be a thrusters bar where you click what speed and then a left and right arrow pic to click to rotate right and left?-should I continue to keep player centered, or go with the warcraft type scenario where the all ships are in exact sector location and the mouse can cause the entire screen to scroll around(with a hot button to move view to your ship in emergencies) and provide a small sector map radar view?

and then...I have never implemented a point and click...move to that spot...before, so mathmatically, it will be challenge for me.( I can rotate and move with arrow keys)

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